It was an incredible twelve months. The first full-strength England team toured Australia, overarm bowling was legalised, W. G. Grace arrived on the stage, an English cricket board was proposed, Lord’s was saved from destruction, work began on the world’s largest stadium, county cricket boomed. And Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack was born (with a slightly different name). 

In 1864: The Year That Changed Cricket, Kit Harris guides us through the series of ground-breaking events that changed the game for good. Drawing on contemporary newspaper reports, letters, magazines and diaries, he shares the human stories behind the sporting developments, painting a vivid picture of Victorian Britain. He uses his source material skilfully – and always with a huge sense of fun – to bring to life the people and places he describes.

From cricket on ice during a harsh winter, to court cases involving theft, fraud and murder – all related to the sport – Harris’s account is entertaining, concise and elegantly structured, taking events month by month and interlacing them with contemporary press reports. 

At the turn of the year, George Parr’s England team were in Australia, though there had been earlier English tourists: Surrey’s H. H. Stephenson (the first to be awarded a hat for taking a wicket from three successive deliveries) had led a side in 1861-62, but it was a much weaker line-up. Several leading cricketers, Parr included, had initially refused to travel, still traumatised by their transatlantic voyage to the United States and Canada two years earlier. But, envious of Stephenson’s fame, tempted by the financial rewards and reassured about the journey, Parr agreed to lead twelve men on a second visit. 

Three of his team kept a diary on the two-month voyage, and their words reveal the ups and downs of a long sea voyage. Chronic seasickness, impromptu sporting contests, musical entertainment, tooth-pulling, wound-lancing and a tragic death from dysentery – and all before they had landed. 

Life was no less eventful after their arrival. Huge crowds gathered to watch Australian teams, usually of 22 players, take on the England XI. Pitches were variable, the weather was sweltering and coach journeys between venues were boneshaking. Accommodation also raised challenges: “The 60 miles of bumpy track took them ten hours, and Lockyer was dismayed that several lost the rims to their hats. They arrived at their hotel at half past nine, hoping for a bath and a lie down, but were shown to two dormitories, with nine beds for the 12 of them. By the time they had found new quarters, it was time for the match.”

Scorecards for each fixture are included, and the story of the tour and its participants is woven throughout the rest of the book. The much-anticipated details of their exploits in Australia took six weeks to reach home via the mail steamer, and the players themselves did not return until long after the English summer had begun. 

Back in February, while Parr and his men were in Australia, John Wisden had published his first Cricketer’s Almanack. In competition with Fred Lillywhite’s Guide to Cricketers, which had already reached its 17th edition, and with Baily’s Cricket Chronicle, Wisden’s Almanack cost 1s (and 1d for postage). However, the technicalities of printing in multiples of 16 pages left space to fill. And so, alongside the cricket, the Almanack also featured a list of Boat Race winners, horse-racing results, key dates in the history of China, a list of British canals – and a range of other irrelevant information (some of which are published at the end of the book). 

By the time Wisden published his second edition almost a year later, those fillers had gone. Instead, there were more scorecards, as well as sections devoted to Parr’s team in Australia and to all eight first-class counties. It was starting to become the Almanack of today, and rival publications were left standing.

County cricket was enjoying something of a resurgence in 1864, having risen and fallen several times in the previous 75 years. Harris charts its growth with painstaking attention to detail, calculating which county would have come out on top using the current Championship points system (with a surprising result). Scorecards and match reports take the reader through the season, while extracts from letters and newspaper reports set out the politics and machinations behind the scenes as county clubs were established and members recruited. 

Other themes in Harris’s account of 1864 may be familiar to readers. He describes the exponential growth of cricket in India, including the construction of Eden Gardens, in Calcutta, which by the 1980s had become the largest cricket stadium in the world. 

When Middlesex were first constituted in February 1864, they rejected Lord’s as a home ground, instead favouring the Cattle Market in Islington. Sussex then replaced their planned fixture against MCC at Lord’s with one against Middlesex at Islington. Their secretary said: “The Lord’s pitch was so bad that the ball jumped from the pitch into the long stop’s hand frequently. The men were very much knocked about, and did not care to go again. The ground was a disgrace to any Sussex common.” It is perhaps a sentiment with which today’s players might have some sympathy. 

Cricket’s relationship with alcohol also features. From drunk and disorderly behaviour landing cricketers in court to rows over refreshments, alcohol was a familiar presence throughout 1864. During the first match of the Australian tour, England were frustrated by what they saw as time-wasting by the Victoria players. Yorkshire’s George Anderson wrote: “The players went to the tents to ‘liquor up’, as they term it here. The climate is certainly very warm, and may induce thirst – but not such an unquenchable thirst as to require drinks every ten minutes.” 

1864: The Year That Changed Cricket eloquently tell us not only how cricket has developed over 162 years, but also – perhaps more remarkably – how it has stayed the same.

Kate White is Assistant Editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.